London Sunset

Bond looked into the cold, calculating eyes of M and he felt a shock as he saw something he had never seen in the eyes of M before: fear. He was perturbed but he mastered himself and settled back into the deep luxuriant leather of the chair, waiting for M to unfold the next chapter in his life.

"Bond this is urgent, you may not have known as you were out on that mission in Australia but we've had some developments here in London that we're quite worried about..."

Bond's mind slipped away for a couple of seconds to the land of awful lager and national obsession with "Barbies" and badly cooked meat. That chef at one barbie had ruined his chateaubriand, but one swift chop to his throat had underlined the error of his mistake. Bond looked forward to his work unfolding over the next few weeks as the Australian cricket team subsided into a well-organized barmaid pestering, kangaroo tampering malstrom of press speculation. if that didn't secure the Ashes then he'd have to go back and break that fat blond man's wrists and maybe put a bullet from his PPK through the forehead of that awful strutting dwarf.

"Bond." M's voice cut through Bond's revery like a laser.

"Yes M, I'm listening."

"We have a problem, an ex KGB operative has just died in hospital, the press thinks he was poisoned, they had an idea it was Thallium, we fed them that one but now it's got out that Polonium 210 was involved. At the moment they're considering it was used as a poison. We're sitting on the brighter of these reptiles, the ones that have made the connection...

"That Polonium 210 can be used as a trigger for a nuclear device, " Bond snapped out, remembering his time in Iran looking for the Polonium labs.

"Precisely Bond. What we have here is not someone who was poisoned by the FSB, a bunch of bungling, vodka swilling amateurs.."

"That's right not a patch on the KGB, remember dear sweet Rosa, M. Such a shame I had to kill her, such a terrible taste in shoes though."

"Bond, can I pull you away from your erotic revery, I know she was your favourite lover.."

"How do you know that M?"

"Never mind Bond, we were a little worried once that you might defect. But let's get back to the matter in hand."

"We have someone who has died of radiation poisoning in London. Radiation from a known nuclear device trigger. A restaurant where he ate, an hotel and his house are glowing. He died because he was in contact with for however a brief a time the trigger device of a bomb. We don't know who he was helping to build it, if that were the case, he may have stumbled onto it, we don't know. But give him his due he kept schtum right to the end, except for a couple of his emigre friends. we have most of them. Though one did surface at a press conference this afternoon but he was raving too much and everyone thought he was mad. We have him under lock and key at Medway. You also know Cobra has met, about the bomb not the death, and is understandably concerned, we don't want to evacuate London but if you don't come up with the goods in 72 hours, we're going to have to. God help us but our offices are in Cardiff. So if you can expedite this..."

"Absolutely M." He felt a tightening in his groin as he anticipated the climax of the assignment.